salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

I am really made up that I’ve just hatched a new product idea, given the experiences from two of my customers recently.

Both have around 20 sales people in the UK, strewn all over the place.  One has Goldmine as their crm - the reps only use it when they want commissions as they ‘back-fill’ data into it then - and the other has always resisted getting the German parent’s system imposed and prefer to have nothing.

Both have more post-sales resource than pre-.  Yet both realised that a wealth of intel was being missed out on.  The post-sales experts were party to wonderful insights that the salespeople never got to build on or use.

The logical answer was to use existing systems to capture it.  But as you can imagine, trying to cobble a crm to capture this was a non-starter.  Then they tried to issue word docs to the post-sales people, so they could fill them out, and send them back into HQ.  Again, disaster.  Amazingly, installation and consultative service guys turned out to be as anti-filling in boxes on screens as their sales colleagues!  Does anybody, anyone at all, use sales software?!

Regardless of this, there is probably a ton of intel your post-sales guys gather, yet you never get to learn about it.  Don’t rely on some central function to unleash it.  Instead, make sure you create a routine to catch it yourself and keep to it so you become even more of a winner.

Someone showed me how they use Oracle’s Sales Online the other day.  Or more accurately, why they don’t bother with it.  Part of a $500m technology-related business, founded in Chicago back in 55, all their global reps are expected to use the system.  Yet none do.  Whenever the Brits moan about it, the response from Corporate is simply “it works in America”.  How helpful.

Then I saw the very front screen they log onto.  It was worse than a spreadsheet.  A very software-looking listing with columns for; opportunity name, value, status & likelihood.  The screen I was shown even had opportunities still live which had been won, and the most common value was virtually ubiquituous, $50,000, and every status was set to ‘open’.  They’d asked for a couple of mods, but 12 months later still no appearance.

Not much use and not much used.

And then I spoke to one of my long-time customer’s that I really think are moving in the right direction and have a lot of time for.  They use Saratoga’s Avenue.  Their head of sales dropped the bombshell that no-one uses it, and he was getting grief from HQ in Europe about it.  He responded he’d asked for a couple of mods, but 12 months later still no appearance.  Sounds familiar…

So I spoke to both chaps about their view of crm.  It’s heart-wrenching.  Along with me, they are both huge fans of what crm should accomplish.  Yet it never gets anywhere near success.  Martin summed it up really well something like this:

‘What sales guys need is a sales tool, and all they ever get is a management tool.  And the sales guys know this.  The only thing they get consistently asked for is their ‘number’, so the only thing they really ever input is what the finger-in-air value of deal will be and roughly when it’ll hopefully come in, so management can create a pipeline spreadsheet and everyone’s off their backs for another month.”

Spent an engaging session with a newly appointed sales manager called Mark at a London prospect, who amongst many things, bemoaned why at his last place they mysteriously ripped out a bespoke system (despite it having universal rep approval) and replaced it with a Siebel one (which all the reps proceeded to completely ignore).  He had some delicious insights, including:

• reps won’t use any crm if they don’t think they need one
• the secret to successful crm deployment is in making the rep unable to operate without one - and that does not mean a “no click no commission” approach
• a successful crm is truly supportive, rather than obstructive, to the daily routines/tasks conducted

Had one of those delicious moments of dawning earlier today.  Many sales teams I meet are disillusioned with their ‘crm’, to the point of jettisoning the whole shabang.  In their place, quasi-random spreadsheets or word process docs float around.

One omnipresent reason for such abandonment, is that reps simply hardly ever tap in (enough) relevant transactional data.  They make a call lasting an hour, and a single sentence appears in the crm.

Just now I came across one of the myriad sales training firms that are seeking to turn their training into a process that can be supported by software, thereby hopefully embedding it within their client’s sales fabric.  I generally support such endeavours.

One reason why these guys I’m talking with are onto a winner, is that one part of their process highlights the numbers of genuine ‘propositions’ that are made to prospect/customer organisations.

And naturally, this got my brain whirring.  I cannot recall seeing any crm that allows for an analysis of how many propositions are made and their outcomes.  On the simplest level, rather than focusing on the conversations you have with any given account, you should instead build on the number of propositions you make and their impact.  It’s a winner of an idea, and one I’m keen to help my training pals exploit.

I know a group of sales trainers/consultants that have a system for key account management.  They’ve ‘automated’ this by creating a spreadsheet to track every opportunity and account in their suggested way.

They sought to create something a bit more professional than a mere spreadsheet, looking at software development.  Then they canned the idea.  It was too difficult to work out how to cater for every customer having a slightly different take on what they wanted.  In effect, it meant each client would want significant ‘bespoking’, and that adds zeros to the bill.

There’s a lot of column inches devoted to incorporating sales methodologies into crm systems.  Yet won’t they fall into the same trap?  And we’re talking about requirements beyond user-defined field fixes and presentation/report-writer options.

Countless (not always small) firms I come across never progress farther than spreadsheets.  Compliance may be low, standards get meddled with, and collation never happen, yet how are these issues helped by ‘crm’? 

Back to my customer that has Saratoga’s Avenue gear, which all the reps naturally avoid using as much as they can.  This isn’t news.  Nor is it restricted to this one software vendor’s code. 

At a recent sales meeting of theirs I attended, they were all moaning about being asked to input the details of specific competitor presence within their target accounts.  When the boss ran a report to see where one particular competitor offering was in situ, he expected an answer in the thousands.  He got ‘21′.

The rapping of knuckles ensued, with protestations aplenty in return.  Then, the head honcho said something inspirational. 

“The definition of success for a crm is where it allows someone to work on accounts on your behalf, that soon introduces them into your funnel”

Silence.  Then they all committed to discover and input the relevant data.

I recently discovered a chap I befriended when he was a client of mine many moons ago was now at the sales helm of Europe’s largest lighting manufacturer/distributer.  I caught up with top fella Brian and was delighted to hear him in fine fettle.

We naturally got to comparing his past and present outfits, as over a beer we regularly used to mock his old employer’s lack of IT nous.  He was extolling the virtues of his bespoked crm package, emanating from Germany, where every quote is registered and each opportunity dutifully progressed.

And the one thing he’d just done was give his (around 100) reps in the field 3G cards.  The idea is they’ll be more likely to input crucial data when waiting for ten minutes in a car park, rather than rely on feeling like it when arriving home, confronted by a million and one distractions later that night.

It’s interesting that everyone accepts that if you don’t jot something down, you will forget about it.  It is impossible for us reps to remember every conversation we have, every promise of delivery made, every proposition suggested and every date we’re supposed to call back.  Yet I bet it’s a relative stroll for a crm vendor or internal IT department to write a mobile device-friendly input routine that allows for whatever the 4 or 5 key elements you want to capture to be documented the instance they occur…..(and avoid the typing by toothpick barrier). I feel a product coming on

Another addition to the sales software/crm space, this time from Entelegen.  Their blurb on what they term ’sales pursuit’ software was eventually fascinating, as it says what every sales person already knows; crm is rubbish ….. but we wish it wasn’t.

They have a six-point pitch built around sales team best-practices.  The first two almost led me to bin their glossy (don’t rob reps of time & focus on full chain of sales effort) but on persevering, found these four gems, startling in their admission:

1. Avoid analysis paralysis – don’t worry about how another department might be ‘touched’ by what you plan, as if you do you’ll lose your job as nothing will happen
2. Face reality – “you can’t automate sales forces”, they don’t do repetitive tasks, they distil complex info
3. Build a winning methodology – build a repeatable sales process that captures the info your top performers grab as they advance deals
4. Motivate and serve the user – dashboards that show performance in obvious graphical ways are the winner as reps are target-driven

Saw two companies in a day recently for first meetings, and both moaned about their sales software.  Apparently, “no bugger uses it”….

Case One - Goldmine

Wonderful kit, about a dozen historical databases all rolled into it with a call plan generating front-end, even having a link somewhere with SAS’s marketing automation suite for campaign tracking.  One particular division of these global information vendors has a rep always 140%+ of target.  His name is John.  He never uses Goldmine.  And said he never would as there was no point.

Case Two - Microsoft CRM

Another global salesteam, this time supplying the oil industry.  Compliance was on the floor with their software.  So they enacted a policy that commission would only be paid if a deal was entered into it.  The result?  Once a month the reps would “back-fill” all the info necessary to claim the cash.  Not the point at all….

Through my subscription to cool US rag Selling Power, I got an enticing offer to read all about the 100 key questions SFA consultants are paid to ask, courtesy of one of the plethora of crm vendors; Entellium.

Was this was an innovative angle in the tired marketing world of crm, or was it merely re-pumping an old trombone? So I downloaded. I’ll try an make this next bit as objective as possible. Mainly because someone, somewhere, probably fairly junior, sweated blood and tears, more than likely a lot done in their own time, to craft this. And endeavour is something I always approve. As for impact? Geez. Here’s the twelve categories into which questions are sorted:

1. Solution Depth & Deployment Options
2. User Interface
3. Activity Management
4. Marketing Capabilities (getting bored yet?)
5. Customer And Contact Management
6. Lead Management
7. Sales Process And Opportunity Management
8. Tracking Revenue And Forecasting (please stay awake)
9. Business Intelligence And Reporting
10. Document Management And Collaboration
11. Set-up And Customisation
12. Support & Help

I wonder what the compiler’s target market is? The only people that would think in these terms, or more pertinently, feel thinking in such terms right, would be precisely the people that render most sales software installs disasters. Namely marketing or IT guys. And it’s not their fault, after all, they are not paid to understand ‘sales’.

I’m bashed and bruised through seeing literally hundreds of sales force technology implementations go sour. Nowadays I’m mainly a close-by observer without a vested interest, but occasionally it’s my kit involved and let me tell you, following the checklist in the above categories would not have made a slight bit of difference.

I really believe the technology-based approach of the above is folly. Salesforce.com Chief Exec Benioff himself when presenting clearly doesn’t feel features and technobabble are important. Knowing that many of the people that sign his orders like that kind of thing means they will talk such nonsense of course. But, and call me old-fashioned here, any implementation of anything, whether it’s a pro forma spreadsheet or a million dollars worth of bespoke hand crafted code, that doesn’t have the CSO’s stamp on it is doomed. And one way to get this focus, is by asking a different set of questions:

Payback:

• How Will It Make Me Money?
• How will it reduce my sales cycles and increase my close ratios?
• Which one closest resembles my guys’ routines?
• Which one will save them the most time?
• Which one will encourage my guys to use it the most?
• Which one can I live with the smallest number of keystrokes being used in?
• When my boss asks me how we’re doing, which one can give me the best answer with the minimum clicks?

I could go on, but you probably get the picture.  I’m off for a “Klippies & Coke” to wind down and wonder when England will ever be able to play one-day cricket